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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29668329">Misplaced Pencils</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somanywords/pseuds/Somanywords'>Somanywords</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Because have you met Steve Rogers?, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Depression, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, idiots to lovers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 23:34:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>13,462</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29668329</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somanywords/pseuds/Somanywords</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Ma, I’m going to start drawing,” Steve says.<br/>“Are you now?” she asks interestedly, sitting across from him. “What kinds of things will you draw?”<br/>He stares at his spoon, giving the question the full attention it deserves. “…Things every artist should know how to draw,” he starts slowly. His Ma nods. “Things that are interesting to me…and Things that are beautiful,” he finishes.</p>
<p>Or, Steve and drawing throughout the years. Also Bucky.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>59</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Misplaced Pencils</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So, I was in the middle of writing another fic when this idea came up behind me, beat me over the head with a baseball bat, and demanded to be written. I thought, cool, a short fic idea! 13k later, here we are...I still can't write anything short.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span class="u">1926 </span>
</p>
<p>It’s 1926 and Steve is bored. He scuffs his foot against the leg of his chair and puts his chin in his hand. Since he’s still slightly sick and it’s cold today, his Ma has forbidden him to go out and play. He didn’t put up too much of a fight, not when she’s right that he’s still a little sick. He’s wrapped in a blanket and his sweater, both of which are scratchy and thick, and he’s almost warm.</p>
<p>His nose aches, and his throat aches, and if he stands up too quick, his head aches. He plays with a piece of butcher paper left on the table and huffs out a sigh.</p>
<p>“Such a sigh, my love?” Sarah Rogers says on her way to the stove. There will be some kind of soup there, cooking away. Cabbage, or maybe onion. Fish, if Steve’s lucky. “What’s bothering you right now?”</p>
<p>This is a special question, Steve knows. Anyone who’s paying attention would know there was more than just one thing bothering him—why else would he be hunched over a table inside, during the day? His Ma knows all about the sore throat and the sore nose and the sore head. So, Steve is grateful, that she still asks. That she knows there’s more important things.</p>
<p>“I’m just…” he takes a moment to think it through. “I’m tired, I guess. Tired of bein’ sick.”</p>
<p>She brushes past him and plants a kiss on the top of his head. “Too much homework?”</p>
<p>Steve doesn’t bother pretend otherwise. Of course, he is tired of being sick; there is nobody in the world, Steve is sure, who is excited to be ill and exhausted. He is sick of being sick, but more pressingly, he is sick of homework.</p>
<p>“I’m gonna be behind anyway,” he points out, knowing she’s listening, even while she faces the stove. He turns his head, putting his good ear closer to her. “What’s the point in suffering twice? I gotta be miserable here, and at school?”</p>
<p>She hums in response, opening the cupboard for the salt. Steve folds the corner of the butcher paper over. It sort of looks like a bird. He takes his pencil and gives it legs, a beak. Then, next to the fold, he draws another bird; wings, body, legs and beak. It’s a little lopsided, but it’s clearly a bird, and that’s what matters.</p>
<p>Pushing aside his math papers, he pulls the butcher paper close. Quietly, he starts drawing his Ma at the stove. Thin shoulders, blouse and skirt, golden hair twisted up on top of her head.</p>
<p>She turns around with a bowl of soup, ruining his drawing halfway done. Steve blows his bangs away. She sets the bowl down in front of him and gives him another kiss.</p>
<p>“Eat, my love. Then we’ll discuss homework.”</p>
<p>He likes that word, <em>discuss.</em> Most kids his age don’t <em>discuss</em> nothing with their folks. Their folks lay down the law, and the kids know enough not to push. Steve’s Ma and him have <em>discussions.</em> Steve knows the point to a real conversation about problems, thanks to his Ma. Most kids don’t. He tries the soup.</p>
<p>It feels nice going down, soothing away the raw pain in the back of his throat. He looks down and draws a bowl of soup. It’s a real good bowl of soup, and when he scribbles some shadows underneath it, it looks almost like he could pick it up right off the page.</p>
<p>“Ma, I’m going to start drawing,” Steve says. This is followed by some pretty awful coughing, and it takes him a moment to calm down enough to have some more soup.</p>
<p>“Are you now?” She asks interestedly, sitting across from him. “What kinds of things will you draw?”</p>
<p>He stares at his spoon, giving the question the full attention it deserves. “…Things every artist should know how to draw,” he starts slowly. His Ma nods. “Things that are interesting to me…and Things that are beautiful,” he finishes.</p>
<p>“Well that all sounds very exciting, my love,” she says with a soft smile. “I think for someone who can’t go outside today, that drawing is an excellent idea. As for the homework…a break might be wise anyway.”</p>
<p>Steve grins at her. It’s decided then, after their discussion. He’s going to start drawing.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span class="u">1930</span>
</p>
<p>“Steve,” his Ma calls from the kitchen. “Bucky’s here!”</p>
<p>Steve hollers back but doesn’t move from his seat on the fire escape. There’s a pigeon strutting around on the rail, and he’s only got to get the wings down now. He keeps his lines soft and easy, and lightly shades the feathers in.</p>
<p>It’s 1930, and Steve is drawing.</p>
<p>Behind him, there’s a loud bang followed by a curse, which probably means Bucky has tripped over Steve’s school books. Steve raises an eyebrow as he darkens the pigeon’s feet.</p>
<p>“Hiya, Steve.” Bucky’s head pokes through the window, grin awfully bright for someone who just tripped over schoolbooks and swore loud enough for Sarah Rogers to hear.</p>
<p>“Hey,” Steve replies, making use of the pigeon before Bucky climbs out and scares the poor thing away. Bucky does scare the poor thing away, flailing wildly as he half steps, half falls out the window and lands besides Steve.</p>
<p>“I’d better not grow too much more, or you’re gonna have to buy a bigger window, pal,” Bucky says, settling himself and pulling out one of the many books he always carries around. His knee knocks against Steve’s, but Steve has been expecting it, and his pigeon sketch remains safe.</p>
<p>Steve looks up finally. “You’d better not grow too much more, or your Ma will have to sell all your books to pay for food.”</p>
<p>Bucky chuckles. “Yeah, yeah. Whatcha drawing?”</p>
<p>Steve holds up his book. The pigeon, he’d decided, fit into the first category: Things Every Artist Should Know How To Draw. Underneath the pigeon are his Ma’s hands, and they’re in the second category: Things That Interested Steve.</p>
<p>Bucky shakes his head. “You finish your math yet?”</p>
<p>Steve frowns, his pencil going back to the drawing with a little more force than necessary. Bucky understands this for what it is, and says nothing. He props open his book and starts reading, mouth occasionally following the words.</p>
<p>After knowing Bucky for a little more than a year now, Steve still isn’t sure what category he’s in. He’s drawn Bucky quite a few times—mostly his hands, which are always moving; sometimes his shoulders, which are hard to draw; and very occasionally his face, squinting eyes, laughing smile, square jaw. But he still doesn’t know which category Bucky fits in.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s impossible to nail Bucky down into one category, but Steve is going to go out trying.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>                                                                                             </p>
<p>1933</p>
<p>And it’s 1933, a few days before Steve’s fifteenth birthday. He’s got a sketchbook full of drawings under his bed, and a second only a third of the way filled, and he can safely say he’s pretty decent at it. It’s pretty easy, after all, when he’d been practicing without realizing it—his schoolwork papers have always been covered in doodles, now they’re just nicer doodles.</p>
<p>He looks up at his newest obstacle; there's an old building leaning over the river and he’s having a hard time with the shadows hanging under the windows.</p>
<p>Still wearing the black eye gifted from his <em>last</em> obstacle, he roughly colors in several squares with his pencil. It’s a little nub of a pencil, but it still works, and he sharpens it faithfully each day. He finishes another window and glances up.</p>
<p>Bucky is stretched out beside him, feet dangling off the dock and arms over his face. The hot sun that’s beating down on Steve’s head and painting his cheeks red only dances across Bucky; his skin is tan and unburnt, his smile lazy and relaxed.</p>
<p>Without thinking about it, Steve flips over to a new page. He swipes out a few lines to capture Bucky’s form, and then begins adding in detail. He glides his pencil around Bucky’s hands; hands that Steve has drawn a million times, hands that he knows just as well as he knows his own, hands that are sporting several bruises and scrapes from the same place Steve received his black eye.</p>
<p>The curve of Bucky’s smile is familiar too, and that shocks Steve a little bit. Gone are the days where he barely drew that smile; at some point, the amount of sketches that are Bucky multiplied. Steve isn’t sure when it happened, he doesn’t think he could remember it if he spent hours trying.</p>
<p>When he glances up again, Bucky’s eyes are trained on him. “What?” he asks, twisting around to get his left ear closer.</p>
<p>Bucky shakes his head in amusement. “Pal, if you could see your face. I thought nothing could improve that shiner, but boy was I wrong!”</p>
<p>“Wasn’t my idea to sit out here for hours,” Steve retorts irritably. “Not my fault some people don’t know what it’s like to get sunburned.”</p>
<p>Bucky just laughs. Steve can’t decide whether to let it irritate him further, or just sit and let it wash over him. In his moment of indecision, he loses the chance—it washes past and he finds himself less bothered than before; he finds himself strangely not bothered at all.</p>
<p>He drags his gaze back down to his book. Bucky is there too, shirt sleeves rolled up to his biceps, smiling up at the viewer, shoulders relaxed and easy.</p>
<p>“Not bad,” real life Bucky murmurs, sitting up to see.</p>
<p>Steve has to resist the urge to slam the cover, to hide it. “Well…it’s okay, I guess.”</p>
<p>“You kidding? With this handsome mug in your art, you’ll go far,” Bucky promises. He grins as Steve elbows him. “No, it’s really good, Steve. Really good.” He lays back down again.</p>
<p>But is it a Thing Steve Is Interested In? Is it a Thing Every Artist Should Know How to Draw? Every artist should know how to draw his best friend, right? He looks back down and wonders whether Bucky isn’t the third category.</p>
<p>And here’s the question lurking in the back of his mind, here’s the question he keeps coming back to: if Bucky doesn’t fit into any of the categories, does Steve any right to be drawing him at all?</p>
<p>“Come on, you hungry?” Bucky asks, eyes shut. “We can go get a hotdog or two.”</p>
<p>Steve would, in fact, like a hotdog or two. He lets Bucky yank him down the street, and tries not to think very hard. It’s a fruitless attempt, but he doesn’t stop trying.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span class="u">1935</span>
</p>
<p>It’s 1935, and Steve can’t draw. Not anymore. He feels like one of his old pencils—worn down and splintered, and missing lead from his center. Only he’s not missing lead. It’s his Ma that’s missing.</p>
<p>He walks. It’s all he can do right now, like the only thing keeping him from falling over right then and there is to keep moving. That’s how he handles his problems, isn’t it? Problems comin’ at you have a harder time if you’re moving. So he walks.</p>
<p>In his pocket, is the half drawn sketch from that scrap of butcher paper all those years ago. Unfinished and full of regret. For some reason, this is what gets caught in his mind. <em>Why,</em> and <em>if only</em> running through him, along with the deep anger from not having finished the sketch. He’d thought he’d have more time. He’d thought she would always be there, thought he’d have another and another chance at drawing her, talking to her, being held by her.</p>
<p>It’s stupid to get so upset at a childish drawing that he wouldn’t even want to look at normally. He’s drawn his Ma countless times since that first one. All completed, all looking heaps better than this deformed, unfinished thing. But as so often with Steve, the rational voice inside him gets drowned out.</p>
<p>He takes it out and holds it tightly—the paper wrinkles and tears in his hand. He doesn’t care. It’s his to carry now, along with this crushing grief and regret.</p>
<p>He wants to finish it—he never wants to see it again—he wants—he wants his Ma back.</p>
<p>In his head, she scolds him gently. <em>You think acting this way is going to change anything? What do we always do?</em> Get up.<em> That’s right. Get up, and face the next problem, my love.</em></p>
<p>He somehow makes it back to their—his apartment. The next problem, huh? Well, first is dinner, and then the rent, and how he’ll make ends meet now that…</p>
<p>Bucky is waiting for him, leaning against the side of the tenement. Still in his suit, hair combed back. A small and disembodied voice whispers that he looks real nice, but it’s even smaller than the rational voice. Steve barely hears it.</p>
<p>“Where’ve you been?” Bucky asks, and the concern in his voice is almost too much. “My folks wanted to give you a ride back from the cemetery.”</p>
<p>Steve gives him some kind of response—he hardly knows what’s coming out of his mouth right now.</p>
<p>Bucky follows Steve up, talks at him, finds the spare key, and invites him over. It’s strangely normal, this act they put on for one another. <em>Come on, </em>they say, without saying a thing, <em>come on and forget about it for a little bit. Come on and pretend with me.</em></p>
<p>When Becca was crying all night. When Steve failed his math exam and had to take it again. When Bucky had broken his hand. When Steve couldn’t find work. When Bucky had gotten in a fight in the subway and dumped by Marie Schenker in the same night. And now.</p>
<p>Steve doesn’t know if he can forget anymore.</p>
<p>“I’m with you to the end of the line, pal,” Bucky says earnestly, hand warm and solid on Steve’s shoulder. It’s the only warm thing in the whole world.</p>
<p>Steve sighs and offers him the best smile he’s got today. He follows Bucky over to the Barnes apartment, because if there’s one thing he can do confused, half asleep, or blind, it’s follow Bucky.</p>
<p>Winnifred and George Barnes welcome him into their home with a cup of tea and comforting pats on the arm. Becca offers him a tight hug and a scrap of paper and a pen. Bucky is an anchor, staying nearby, holding Steve on his feet.</p>
<p>Until Steve gets pushed down on the couch that is. Bucky sets the tea aside and leans forward. Steve isn’t sure what exactly is happening before Bucky’s arms surround him, and his head lands on Bucky’s shoulder.</p>
<p>He cries. He tries to explain about the crumpled piece of paper in his pocket, but he can tell Bucky doesn’t understand any of it between the rough sobbing and absurdity of it all. It doesn’t matter. Bucky holds him tightly and lets him get it out.</p>
<p>He has no idea how long they stay there. When he sits back shakily, it could be hours, it could be days. Bucky gives him a minute, glancing down and playing with Becca’s pen. Then, he hands it to Steve.</p>
<p>Steve draws his Ma.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span class="u">1939</span>
</p>
<p>Steve’s sick again, so naturally, he draws. Papers covered in feverish scribblings overflow out of him; they fall off his blankets and dribble down to the floor, so that Bucky, coming home from work, pauses in the kitchen to look exasperated.</p>
<p>Steve coughs in reply.</p>
<p>The little furrow between Bucky’s brows deepens. “How ya feelin’ today, Stevie?” he asks, and his voice is calm. His eyebrows are not.</p>
<p>Steve tries to answer, <em>I’m fine, </em>or maybe<em> don’t worry so much, you broccoli head</em>. But he can’t get the words out, instead continuing to cough. Bucky’s at his side in an instant, one hand brushing across his forehead.</p>
<p>“Shit, you’re warm,” he mutters. “Alright then.”</p>
<p>And he’s gone again, his footsteps brisk and efficient. Steve tries to call after him, but it’s all he can do to stay sitting up. He looks down at the drawings strewn across his lap. The latest one is of the radiator, and somewhere in the midst of all those coils and shadows, he’s grown more tired than he would’ve thought possible after sitting in bed all day.</p>
<p>He lies down abruptly. His sketchbook, left on the pillow, digs into his head, but he can’t summon the energy to care.</p>
<p>The room is hazy and hot. He can’t get comfortable; as soon as his head stops swimming his stomach begins. His throat feels constricting and scratchy, and much too thin—he’s reminded of a painting he once saw at the Brooklyn Museum. A snake, curled in on itself, the scales rough and strangely alive on the canvas.</p>
<p>He wakes back up at the return of Bucky’s hands—wakes up? Was he sleeping?—they tug the sketchbook away, light and fast as a feather. Steve exhales as the sharp pain in his head lessens. Had he been lying on his book?</p>
<p>“<em>Idiot,”</em> Bucky murmurs. “Can you drink anything, pal? Some tea?”</p>
<p>Steve tries to look at him, willing his eyes to focus. It works for a little bit. Bucky sharpens and comes into view, vast and safe, and worried.</p>
<p>“Hello,” Bucky says, and his voice shakes slightly.</p>
<p>“Hi,” Steve croaks, and he can’t even feel victory at that one syllable, because it hurts<em> so much</em> to talk. His face contorts in pain without his permission, and Bucky’s hand returns to his forehead, this time with a cool cloth.</p>
<p>Steve closes his eyes as his bangs get pushed to the side. He sleeps.</p>
<p>He has no idea how much time passes while he battles himself in his dreams. He’s not stupid, he knows one day his ongoing fight with Death will end, and it won’t be him that comes out on top. But. Sarah Rogers taught her son a thing or two, and he doesn’t give up that easy. In his fever dreams, he runs, knowing if he can just go fast enough, she’ll be waiting for him—but when has he ever been able to run fast enough?</p>
<p>And then he is eleven again, his head slammed into a brick wall by some bully, and he can barely see straight, and there’s someone else coming, someone else coming to kick Steve while he’s down, but then—</p>
<p><em>"Bucky!”</em> He calls joyously. Of course, it’s Bucky.</p>
<p>Bucky turns and gives him a strange look, and Steve remembers—they just met, so how would he know Bucky’s name?</p>
<p>“Steve, hey Steve, stay with me,” Bucky whispers, only it’s Bucky grown up and tall, and something twists in Steve’s chest, a dark inevitability, one he isn’t sure he wants. Bucky smiles, all cocky and sharp. “<em>It’s cold out, stay inside!”</em></p>
<p><em>I don’t wanna,</em> Steve thinks, but he can’t speak, can’t get the words out.</p>
<p>“Shush,” Bucky says, not smiling anymore. His collar is crumpled and loose, his hair falling into his face, his eyes terrified. “I’m here.”</p>
<p>He’s here…Steve reaches out wildly and actually grabs on to something. It’s soft and warm in his fingers, and it grabs him back. Bucky’s hand.</p>
<p>And then it’s squeezing too tightly, and he can’t get loose. Is this the end, then? Has he finally lost? It would be so easy, he knows. To just let go, and not look back.</p>
<p>“Stevie, I swear to God,” Bucky whispers, and Steve turns around. “Don’t you dare leave me, you understand? Please—”</p>
<p>And Steve remembers. <em>Get up.</em> He gets up.</p>
<p>He wakes up. Moonlight is pouring through the window to his left, casting the room in a strange silver glow. Did he wake up, or is this still the nightmare? He turns his head and tries to look down. He expects pain after that, and is mildly surprised when none comes, save for a dull throb that means the pain hasn’t been gone long.</p>
<p>The rest of his body is there too, slightly aching. There is a weight on his leg—Bucky, he realizes. Bucky, Bucky, always Bucky, who doesn’t fit neatly into Steve’s categories. Bucky, who fell asleep on Steve’s leg, with his mouth half open and cheek all squished up.</p>
<p>For a minute, Steve decides to let him sleep, but then his plan is ruined by a hacking cough. His throat’s raw, but not so bad as before. He chokes in a breath, willing himself still. Bucky is peering back at him, clutching a glass of water.</p>
<p>Steve takes the water and drinks.</p>
<p>Bucky’s face crumples and drops into his hands. “Oh my God,” he breathes, barely audible to Steve’s good ear. “Oh my God.”</p>
<p>“What’s He done now?” Steve asks weakly, setting down the glass.</p>
<p>Bucky makes a sound into his hands, and Steve isn’t sure if he’s laughing or crying. He reaches out and taps Bucky’s arm. Bucky doesn’t look up, but he moves one hand to cover Steve’s.</p>
<p>“Hand me my pencil, would ya?” Steve croaks. He wants to draw, wants to capture Bucky in this harsh and cool lighting.</p>
<p>Bucky wordlessly passes over the pencil and sketchbook. His eyes are red.</p>
<p>“How long?”</p>
<p>“A whole week,” Bucky admits. “But tonight was the worst. I thought you were gonna…”</p>
<p>Steve outlines Bucky’s jaw. <em>Which category?</em> His head pleads. He pushes the voice away; it doesn’t matter right now. “Thanks, Buck. I’m sorry to be such a—”</p>
<p>“Don’t say it,” Bucky says fiercely. “Don’t you say it, Steve Rogers. You are <em>not</em> a burden, not to me, not to your Ma, not to anyone. I don’t want to hear another goddamn word about it, you hear me?”</p>
<p>Steve’s pencil droops in his hand. He doesn’t stop it; he can finish the drawing tomorrow, and he <em>is</em> so tired… “Alright, I hear you.”</p>
<p>“About damn time,” Bucky mutters. “Now get some sleep.”</p>
<p>Steve pretends not to notice Bucky swipe at his eyes as he turns away. He’s pretty well practiced at pretending not to notice things.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span class="u">1941</span>
</p>
<p>Sitting across from Dorothy Hoffman, Steve’s fingers itch. She fits into not one, but two categories. Things Every Artist Should Know How To Draw, and Things That Are Beautiful. She’s short, like him, and her nose is maybe the nicest nose Steve has ever seen. Her hair is black and pinned back in a fancy way that Steve longs to commit to paper.</p>
<p>But he can’t very well start doodling on a napkin, can he? He picks at the wooden table instead, resisting the urge to glance away for Bucky. Bucky, who is most definitely dancing, and not paying any attention to whether or not Steve is drawing.</p>
<p>“Do you mind, if I draw you?” He finds himself asking.</p>
<p>Dorothy leans forward across the table. “Ooh, are you an artist? I’d love that.”</p>
<p>Steve fidgets, embarrassed. He pulls a pencil out of his jacket pocket—a new one that Bucky bought him a few days ago, when he noticed Steve’s old one looking a little short. That is to say, about the size of a quarter.</p>
<p>“Pencil won’t show the best on these napkins,” he explains as he starts out with her outline. “But I’ll do my best. And, uh…” he looks up shyly. “I’d love to hear more of your ideas about the movies, if you’d like?”</p>
<p>She beams back at him. <em>She really is a nice girl, </em>Steve thinks faintly, lost in the brilliance of that smile. “You’re a real good listener, Steve,” she says. “Most folks don’t care much about my silly dreams.”</p>
<p>“I don’t think they’re silly,” he protests, curving his pencil around her eyes. “Everyone’s got a dream. Bein’ in the movies ain’t the craziest one in a long time.”</p>
<p>Dorothy tilts her head to the side. “What’s your dream, Steve Rogers?”</p>
<p>What’s his dream? That’s a good question. Does he have dreams? <em>Kinda hard to have a dream or two, when you don’t have but a few years left,</em> he thinks. He begins on Dorothy’s dark curls. It would be nice to be a full time illustrator. His work on billboards, labels, advertisements. It would be nice to make enough money that Bucky didn’t always look so worried. It would be nice to have a back that didn’t bother him all the time. It would be nice to know just why he found himself drawing Bucky over and over again, like he was trying to find something in the paper. But those weren’t dreams, were they? Not compared to being an actor in the movies, that was for sure.</p>
<p>“Well, I like drawing,” he says.</p>
<p>Dorothy nods. “Would you want to draw for a comic book? Superheroes, and wild fights?”</p>
<p>“I’ve never tried to draw a superhero,” he says truthfully. “Is that what you’d like to play, in the movies?”</p>
<p>And that gets her going again, explaining about camera shots and lighting and costumes, and he listens the best he can with his one good ear and jazz blaring all around them. He could get used to this, he thinks. Listening to Dorothy, drawing her pretty nose, music playing.</p>
<p>But then the music reminds him, and he glances over Dorothy’s shoulder, looking for Bucky. He’s in the middle of the dance floor with Dorothy’s friend Lydia, limbs flying, but as though he can feel Steve’s gaze, he turns.</p>
<p>Under the bright lights, his collar loose and hair wild, he looks…alive and lovely in a way Steve wouldn’t’ve thought possible. Steve looks away and back down at his sketch. Dorothy is describing a couple of actresses’ arguments on something or other, and Steve tries to draw in her smile.</p>
<p>Later, he hands her the napkin, somewhat pleased by how it turned out despite being pencil on napkin, but the rest of him distracted.</p>
<p>She exclaims over the detail, and kisses him on the cheek. It’s nice, he tells himself. Get your head screwed on straight. Dorothy is right here, right now, right in front of you. It is nice, and it’s certainly not Dorothy’s fault he’s a million miles away.</p>
<p>Here’s a girl kind and sweet enough to sit with him, and talk to him, and what is he giving her in return? A scrawl on the back of a napkin, and a distracted nod. He’s sorry, but he doesn’t know how to change it.</p>
<p>She takes his hand as they walk home under the streetlamps. She fits into two categories, he’d decided, but she ought to fit into all three. She doesn’t.</p>
<p>“Thank you very much for the date,” she says on her front stoop. “I had a lovely time talking with you.”</p>
<p>“You’re a real sweet girl, Dorothy,” Steve says, his voice sounding false and dull in his ear. “I had a nice time too.”</p>
<p>She leans in, and he doesn’t stop her. The kiss is sweet and quick, and she reddens as she pulls away. “Thanks for listening to my dreams—I hope yours come true.” Then she turns, darts through her door, and is gone.</p>
<p>Steve walks back slowly, hands in his pockets. He’s angry with himself, and he’s not sure why. Well, he knows half of why, at least. Dorothy is a nice girl, and she deserves more than Steve and his bad moods. And Steve <em>is</em> in a bad mood, he knows that too. That’s what he gets for letting Bucky drag him into something like this.</p>
<p>Bucky, who is waiting for him in their tiny apartment, probably singing while he yanks his shoes off, ready to tell Steve all about Lydia and what a great dancer she is. Steve can’t face it, can’t face <em>him</em>, at the moment. Can’t face him asking about Dorothy, can’t face wondering about <em>what ifs,</em> and <em>whys</em>.</p>
<p>Bucky, who is actually still outside the dance hall. “Steve!” he calls as Steve approaches.</p>
<p>Steve grits his teeth and nods. “Where’s Lydia?”</p>
<p>“Went home,” Bucky says, sounding surprisingly uncaring. “Let’s go home too, huh? I’m beat.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t ask about Dorothy, and Steve doesn’t bring her up either. Instead, he walks home underneath Bucky’s arm, and lets it drift to the back of his mind, to be taken apart and agonized over in the hours of the night normally used for sleeping.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span class="u">1943</span>
</p>
<p>Steve has to teach himself how to draw again. His hands haven’t grown <em>that</em> much, but it’s enough to throw him off track, and he can’t use the pencils down as much; they are dwarfed by his clumsy trashcan lid hands. It’s slow, but he doesn’t give up, and he fills up a book with slim lines and crosshatch marks—the USO girls in all their different versions. In full costume and makeup, in dressing gowns and curlers, in civilian clothes ready to go out, and curled up in their bus seats sleeping.</p>
<p>They’re nice, all of them, and they decide to take him under their wing. He learns all kinds of things; he now can do their makeup or hair for them, and his own, which is nice. He learns several new card games, and how to cheat at them. He learns how to draw again.</p>
<p>Even though now he can see colors right; can see the blazing red in the tubes of lipstick scattered around the dressing rooms, and the vivid blue of the costumes, he keeps to his gray pencil. In a world of new vision and brightness, it’s a small comfort—a reminder of how things used to be.</p>
<p>One of the girls, a real crazy one named Lucille tries to teach him to dance. It doesn’t go very well, but it ends with ten girls spinning around him laughing their heads off, and that’s not so bad.</p>
<p>“It’s not my fault,” he points out afterward, when they’ve collapsed on the rug of their small backstage room. “You’re all dancers. I’m not here for my feet.”</p>
<p>“Your feet would be a lot more useful if they weren’t used as battering rams,” redheaded Bea says, rubbing her foot ruefully. Steve apologizes for the fifth time, but he knows she isn’t really bothered. They’re good friends, all of them.</p>
<p>He draws little pictures for them to send to their families, or their fellas. A drawing of Lucille for her ma, brown curls and eyes twinkling. A sketch of the small town they passed through their first day in Italy for Bea’s fella. Another girl, Josephine, gets a picture of two chickens chasing each other down the dirt road.</p>
<p>They ask him about his family back home, and he tells them about his Ma, and the Barneses, and Bucky. Bucky writes him, sometimes, short and cross letters; his dark mood bleeding in between the lines. Sometimes they’re long and full of stories and descriptions of the other men in Bucky’s unit. Steve sends back drawings and reads the best jokes aloud to the girls.</p>
<p>And then there is Peggy Carter. Steve still has no idea how he feels about Peggy Carter, but she’s beautiful and she terrifies him, and her dark hair, sharp jaw, and mean punch feel familiar to the butterflies in his stomach. He can barely get two words out when she’s near, but every now and then she smiles at him.</p>
<p>He never let himself have the time to figure out his heart—it was a broken, erratic heart anyway—and after Dorothy and the sour taste of that memory, he decided it was all too much trouble to deal with, and he was just fine without it.</p>
<p>Peggy gets him thinking though. He thinks all day and night, tries to pick through the tangles of this new and heathy, but no less muddled heart of his. But as usual, he doesn’t find any answers.</p>
<p>She brings him one of Bucky’s letters one day, and he feels confused and dizzy about it; two of his worlds colliding in a way he’s not sure he likes. The letter is long though, and distracts him for a while. He reads it three times and then folds it back up and slips it in his pocket; he’ll read it again before bed.</p>
<p>Lucille kisses him, backstage after that disaster of a show. He pulls away and looks down. “I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>“No, <em>I’m</em> sorry,” she says, red lips pursed. “There’s someone else, isn’t there.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” he answers truthfully.</p>
<p>She smiles. “Well, you can’t blame me for trying. You’re a swell guy, Steve.” And she leaves him with a pat on the arm.</p>
<p>And then he learns that Bucky is missing. And Peggy is calling after him, but the flips his stomach does whenever she looks at him have been replaced by fearful churning. As they drive away, he glances over his shoulder once.</p>
<p>Bea, Lucille, and Josephine are watching him from the back of their quickly erected stage—tan coats over their costumes, curls limp in the rain. Lucille lifts a hand in farewell, like she knows Steve won’t be coming with them on the rest of the trip. He waves back.</p>
<p>He doesn’t know it then, but it’s the last he ever sees of them.</p>
<p>     </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span class="u">1945</span>
</p>
<p>“Whatcha got there, Cap?”</p>
<p>Steve, who is in the middle of scribbling <em>1945</em> under his sketch looks up, surprised. Dugan leans over, the firelight casting terrifying shadows under his moustache. Steve looks down at his book—there are flat and sharp shadows colored in there, jagged lines that poured from his head in the still, dim light of their camp.</p>
<p>Morita scoots closer for a quick look. “It’s the fight from yesterday,” he says, sitting back.</p>
<p>“The fight from yesterday?” Dugan smirks. “I don’t see no dead bodies, or explosions, or Nazis in their stupid little uniforms…”</p>
<p>A hand snakes around Steve’s shoulder and takes his sketchbook. He lets the hand, because it’s worn and dirty and familiar.</p>
<p>“It’s awful,” Bucky says bluntly. “I like it.”</p>
<p>He hands it back, and Steve resists the urge to grab ahold of his hand and never let go. Bucky is…different out here, and aren’t they all, but sometimes Steve can’t stand the darkness that seeps from his friend. When they’re unsettled, Steve draws; Bucky talks. But he isn’t talking that much these days.</p>
<p>Dernier mutters something inaudible. Gabe repeats it louder, and in English. “Why do you want to remember something like that?”</p>
<p>Steve shakes his head.</p>
<p>“It’s so he can let it go,” Bucky explains, still somewhere behind Steve. “Gotta get it out, or it’ll stay in your lungs, drag you down choking.” He sounds like he speaks from experience. Steve turns his head to get his good ear into position, before he remembers that he has two good ears now.</p>
<p>“Is that why you’re always writing in that journal of yours?” Gabe wonders. The fire lights half of his face; the other half is completely gone—Steve thinks of Red Skull and tamps down the ever constant fear that he carries around now.</p>
<p>Bucky shifts and his boot knocks against Steve’s back. Steve tilts his head back and catches his gaze. As strange as it is, even now, he's shocked by the blue gray color of Bucky’s eyes. The color is more beautiful and wonderful than he ever could’ve imagined—he flashes back to that first day, the walk back from Austria, and how he could barely keep his eyes on the road for marveling at how vivid they were. There are shadows under Bucky’s eyes nowadays, and his hair is falling across his forehead, and he is still handsome; he is still Bucky.</p>
<p><em>Still Bucky</em>, Steve thinks firmly. Right? But then, who is he to judge—neither of them is the same any more.</p>
<p>A thousand conversations pass between the two of them, waiting to be spoken into existence. “Yeah,” Bucky says finally. His words for Gabe, his eyes for Steve.</p>
<p>Steve shivers, and it seems to jolt Bucky out of his reverie. He drapes an extra blanket around Steve’s shoulders, ignoring his protests.</p>
<p>“Yeah, yeah, the serum makes you warm, whatever, pal. I know those toes are still icy, you can’t fool me.”</p>
<p>Dugan barks out a laugh. “Well, I don’t write it out, or draw it out, and I’m still fine!”</p>
<p>Falsworth moves from where he’d been impersonating a particularly inanimate log. “Clearly you get it out in bad, inappropriate jokes.”</p>
<p>They all share a low laugh that fades into a comfortable silence.</p>
<p>Bucky steps around Steve and lowers himself to the ground as Dugan and Morita start an argument over an ill timed joke about the state of Morita’s socks the day before. “What else you got in that book, huh?” he murmurs. “Somethin’ less nightmarish?”</p>
<p>Steve knocks their knees together. “Not really.”</p>
<p>Bucky flips the page over; Steve lets him. There is Dernier, holding a grenade, his eyes wild. Bucky huffs and shakes his head. Underneath Dernier is Peggy; sharply contrasted, deadly and stunning. Bucky goes still at the sight, and Steve has to fight the urge to fidget.</p>
<p>“Whaat,” he asks, knowing Bucky will spit it out. <em>Chin doesn’t line up right. </em>Or <em>nose is a little small, dontcha think?</em></p>
<p>Bucky doesn’t respond, only turning another page back. Steve blinks, embarrassed. It’s Bucky, shirt half unbuttoned, leaning against something barely hinted at. His legs sprawl out in front of him, and his gun lies across his lap—Steve had labored for a while to get the glint just right. Bucky’s eyes are half shut; he looks casually threatening, dangerous. <em>What category, what category—</em></p>
<p>Bucky shakes his head again. “That’s me alright, Stevie. I don’t know how you do it.”</p>
<p>Impulsively, Steve leans over to flip the page. He passes a landscape sketch—on of the small towns they’d marched past a few days ago. Opposite that, is one drawn a few days ago of Bucky from a few years back—chin tipped up and bare feet swinging over the edge of the docks down at Red Hook, smile wide and easy. “This is you too, Buck.”</p>
<p>Eyes sad, Bucky turns and looks at him, lips quirking up on one side. “Sometimes I wonder, you know. Sometimes I wonder just what I am now.”</p>
<p>“You’re Bucky,” Steve says simply. “You’re my best friend.” <em>You’re everything in this world, even if I can’t find a category to fit you,</em> he wants to say, but he can’t. <em>You’re always and forever, and every part of you is perfect.</em></p>
<p>Bucky presses their shoulders together. “Punk. Serum didn’t change the fact that you’re a huge sap, huh?”</p>
<p>And it’s like he knew what Steve was thinking, or at least part of it. Steve shakes his head. “You’re a sap too, Barnes.”</p>
<p>Bucky’s small smile melts into something else. His eyes flicker, and Steve can just tell he’s back in that place—on that table, even though more than a year has passed since Steve ripped those awful straps away. “You know, when you think you’re dying, you make all kinds of promises.”</p>
<p>Steve wants to cut him off, wants to wrap him in assurances and some promises of his own, but he doesn’t. Bucky has held his cards close to his chest, kept his thoughts private, but this is Bucky finally talking it out. This is important, and he’s letting Steve hear it. Steve nods, and does his best to listen.</p>
<p>“When you’re dying, there’s only a few things at the front of your mind. Only a few things worth thinkin’ about.” Bucky’s gaze stutters down to the fire, but he’s not really seeing it. “And I thought to myself…what have you done? Have you done anything with your life? Too late now, it’s over.”</p>
<p>Steve bites his tongue.</p>
<p>“Then I thought about Becca. Her two braids, poking outta the back of her smart little head; about her growing up and doing something with <em>her</em> life, and how my death was only a small part of giving her that. And…that should have been enough, but I kept coming back to how none of that made up for the fact that she was gonna do all that without a brother. Was it my place to choose? Nah. Was there any point in thinking about it at all? Nah. But I couldn’t help it.”</p>
<p>Coldness creeps down Steve’s spine; something wrong, like his vertebrae are still crooked. He hates this, hates Bucky talking about himself this way, hates having to hear it. He makes himself hear it, makes himself take it all. <em>Every part of you is perfect,</em> he’d said. Which means he needs to hear every part; even the bad. Especially the bad.</p>
<p>“And then, I thought of you,” Bucky continues quietly. “My death wasn’t just going to be Becca’s, or the rest of my family’s, it was yours too. But you were safe, and that was what mattered.” He turns and stares at Steve. “Only you weren’t, were you. Couldn’t even give a fella his dying wish—had to run off and get yourself shot up with chemicals, ignore everyone and run over miles of enemy ground, and break into a fuckin’ Hydra base <em>all alone—</em>”</p>
<p>“Hey,” Steve protests.</p>
<p>“Hey yourself, you idiot.” Bucky swats the back of Steve’s head. “Sometimes you make me so angry I wanna—” he breaks off, looks back down. “You shouldn’t be here in all this mess. What you’re seeing, what you’re doing—” he points at the sketchbook, opened to the drawing of a sunny day years ago, but meaning the drawing of yesterday, “I didn’t want any of this for you.”</p>
<p>Steve frowns. “That’s not your choice, Buck.”</p>
<p>“No. Maybe not. But I wished it all the same.” Bucky smiles, but it’s a half, twisted kind. “You’ve always been shit at doing what everyone else wanted though.”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry, Bucky,” Steve whispers. “But I’d do it again every time. You’d be dead, you’d be dead if I hadn’t.” He shivers again, and again, it’s not from the cold.</p>
<p>“I was supposed to be!” Bucky says harshly. Across the fire, Falsworth looks up worriedly. “I was supposed to die in there, Steve, I was ready to die, and you showed up ready to fight anything and everyone like you always do, only you’d let them mess with you, change you—”</p>
<p>Steve grits his teeth. “You said it yourself, none of that changes the fact that your family would have to live without you, that Becca would’ve had to live without you.” <em>That I would’ve had to live without—</em>“Bucky. Don’t be angry, please don’t be angry. You’d do the same for me--you’re <em>doing</em> the same for me.”</p>
<p>Bucky opens his mouth and then shuts it abruptly. His blue- gray eyes track over Steve’s face, like he’s trying to relearn the details of his skin, like he’s making up for what he missed while he spent a year in his own head. Steve holds his gaze, steady. He sees the moment Bucky comes to terms with it; the moment Bucky realizes how it is now. They’ve always saved each other. They’re not going to stop, and now that means killing for each other, and that’s just how it is.</p>
<p>“I hate it here,” Bucky confesses. “I hate who I am now.”</p>
<p>Steve slips his arm around Bucky’s shoulders and tugs him close. Bucky exhales shakily but lets him; his hand snakes around Steve’s waist.</p>
<p>There isn’t much Steve can say to that. There’s only so many times a guy can say <em>you’re still my friend.</em> And wasn’t he just wondering who his friend was turning into out here?</p>
<p>“We’re all somethin’ else,” he agrees. “Me more than anyone.” Bucky winces; Steve tightens his grip. “But we’re together, aren’t we?”</p>
<p>Bucky laughs, and though it’s not as loud and quick as it used to be, it still warms Steve’s heart. “Sap.”</p>
<p>Steve ducks his chin and smiles.</p>
<p>“…Well, you’re <em>my</em> sap, I guess.”</p>
<p>The stomach butterflies start up again, wondering what Bucky might’ve meant by that, and if Steve would like to try and puzzle it out a little more right now, but he sternly envisions them all turned to ash and stares into the fire. It’s not the time, anyways.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span class="u">2011</span>
</p>
<p>And it’s 2011 and Steve can’t do anything for the terrible feeling of <em>wrong</em> following him around constantly. He can’t draw, he can’t sleep, he can’t <em>breathe,</em> from how wrong it is. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, and he finally understands what Bucky was trying to tell him a few months ago—a few decades ago—<em>I was supposed to die!</em></p>
<p>They set him up in some tiny little apartment in Manhattan, and then they leave him there to try and sculpt the leftover shards of his life into something worth keeping. He always used to suffer from thinking too much, and now he thinks even more.</p>
<p>He is completely and utterly alone. He is so tired, and angry, and he just wants it all to be over. He has a whole computer of knowledge at his fingertips, and he uses it to try and find out what happened to his friends after the war. Every one of them made it to the end. Everyone but him and Bucky.</p>
<p>He tries once, to pick up a pencil. The first lines come out jagged and forced; he ends up with a snapped pencil and a paper spattered with lies.</p>
<p>When he manages to sleep, his dreams are full of violence. His head doesn’t know the war is over, doesn’t know how long it’s been. Steve is still on the battlefield, mud spattering on his uniform, hands raw around the straps of his shield, Bucky at his back. Until he isn’t. Steve hates that train with ever fiber in him; in his dreams he learns to hate it more.</p>
<p>He sits at his cheap table, shirt soaked with sweat, hands shaking, staring at nothing until sunrise.</p>
<p>It’s not healthy to spend hours cloaked in regret, but there isn’t much he can’t do and still be fine now. It’s been three years for him, three years. And people would ask him how it felt, to finally be free of pain and aches, to be healthy. <em>I don’t feel very healthy,</em> he’d think, while smiling brightly and agreeing that it certainly was nice, ma’am. <em>I feel like a splintered glass jar full of nails—like all those aches and pains only moved to my heart.</em></p>
<p>Sometimes he catches sight of his reflection and does a double take. The war was where Captain America lived, and now that it’s over, it seems like he ought to be himself again; small, sickly, dying. Maybe he is.</p>
<p>He spends some sleepless nights in the gym, where he can take that pain and shape it into something tangible. He walks a lot, during the day. He passes a museum, where artists have set up outdoors to paint the skyline. A young woman with short blue hair smiles at him and offers him a spare canvas. He can’t. He can’t. He thanks her anyway.</p>
<p>One day he walks past a man watering the tiny patch of grass outside his brownstone. The breeze shifts and freezing droplets rain down on Steve’s head. He can’t stop himself from violently shivering, his breaths coming in short gasps—<em>asthma</em>, he thinks frantically and he half runs, half trips to a bench down the sidewalk.</p>
<p>It’s only after his panic subsides that he remembers he doesn’t have asthma anymore.</p>
<p>He misses Lucille, Bea, and Josephine. He misses Peggy. He misses—</p>
<p>He is living in a nightmare—he never wakes up. More than anything, he wants to go back ten years; to wake up with Bucky’s breathing beside him, and his Ma’s hand in his hair. He wants to be known; he wants to be loved. But it’s been so long, there’s nobody left. And he’s not sure he quite remembers how to be somebody anymore either.</p>
<p>He doesn’t really <em>want</em> to be anyone anymore.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span class="u">2012</span>
</p>
<p>And then the sky opens up and there are for real aliens flying everywhere—<em>look Buck—</em>and he watches one go flying into the side of a building and claw its way down where it immediately picks up an empty car and rips it in half.</p>
<p><em>Me too, sister,</em> Steve thinks, and he tells the Hulk to smash—a simple word they both understand. He loses himself in the fight, lets the adrenaline carry him to the end, when they close the portal and slap cuffs on Thor’s insane brother. He gets through all the cleanup, and the shawarma place Tony insists on going. Steve doesn’t complain, he’s hungry, really hungry for the first time a long while. And if none of them says very much, it doesn’t matter since the food’s that good.</p>
<p>Afterwards, after everything has been cleaned up on the surface at least, they go back to the tower. Tony has already been fixing up what was broken, and all that remains of the battle is some scaffolding on the top floor. He deposits them at different levels, explaining that he built them each a floor and they’re welcome as long as they want.</p>
<p>“Take a shower, or two or three,” he says in that flippant way that’s so like his father. “Some of you are so gross right now JARVIS would probably mistake you for the trash, and we can’t have that. Then regroup in the common level, we’ll have dinner.”</p>
<p>“Will there be more shawarma?” Bruce asks, un-hulked now, cleaning his glasses nervously. Steve likes Bruce, likes his calm presence, and his honest opinions.</p>
<p>Tony quirks an eyebrow. “Whatever you’re picturing, picture it a thousand times better.”</p>
<p>“But that’s actually not an answer—” Bruce’s sentence is cut short as Tony stuffs him out the doors into an apartment; based on Steve’s quick look, one with dark colors and several wall hangings.</p>
<p>“We’ll be there, jeez,” Natasha says with an eyeroll. She’s holding on to Barton, who’s still sporting a bit of a limp, and Steve idly wonders if Tony built them separate floors or only one to share. He doesn’t get to ask though, because Tony pushes him out next, with one last threat, and he’s alone.</p>
<p>The place is nice, he won’t lie. But he’s not that big of a fan. The floor to ceiling windows leave him feeling a bit too exposed, and he does a quick sweep of the place before setting his shield down on the dining table. There are several old, awful posters with his face on them hanging on the wall, accompanied by some just as awful, not quite as old pictures from something Steve doesn’t recognize.</p>
<p>He takes them all down, and then takes a blanket off one of the two beds and sits in the corner of the living room, half hidden behind an armchair.</p>
<p>The place…isn’t his favorite. So what. It’s a helluva lot better than the apartment he’s been ‘living’ in. And Tony built them all somewhere to live, together. It’s far from family, Steve knows, but it might just be the first step toward friends. He’s desperate enough that he’ll try just about anything now.</p>
<p>He goes to dinner.</p>
<p>If he likes Bruce, he likes his other teammates just as well. There is Natasha’s thick wall of indifference that hides a good dose of dry humor, and Barton’s bad jokes and clumsiness—slightly worrisome for a sniper, and then Thor, who is kind and good at watching your back, and Tony, who is like a Greek grape leaf wrap—weird and slightly wrong in the mouth at first, but maybe something to grow into liking.</p>
<p>He does his best to fit in with them, but they’re all so alive, he doesn’t know how he can possibly measure up. But still, it’s nice not to be quite so alone for a little.</p>
<p>Thor leaves almost immediately after, to take that insane brother back to whatever planet they live on—and though Steve is sad to see him go, he’s not at all sad to see the last of Loki. The rest of them decide to stick around a little longer, and the first day waking up in his too soft bed in his too quiet apartment brings him upstairs to Natasha Romanoff’s floor under threat of death.</p>
<p>She’s wearing sweats and a tank top when he steps out of the elevator—he hates the way there are no doors in this place—and without her uniform on, she looks a lot less old, but no less intimidating. His eyes snag on a delicate arrow resting in the dip of her neck. He documents the new information.</p>
<p>“Hello,” she says, leading him into the kitchen and offering him a drink. Her apartment is furnished similarly to his; sleek and new furniture, creepy paintings on the wall. No sign of the person living within. “Tell me something about yourself, Rogers.”</p>
<p>He takes the drink to have something to do with his hands; privately, he thinks it’s a little early to be drinking, even for him, and he’s pretty sure she didn’t just pour water out of that container. “Um…”</p>
<p>“I’ll start,” she says, low and smooth. “Steve Rogers is your regular seventy five year old man. He plays frisbee, he watches documentaries, does crosswords, and doesn’t get out enough. Sound about right?”</p>
<p>She’s watching him over the lip of her glass, and he wonders if her goal is to freak him out enough that he starts drinking with her. He sets the glass down on the counter carefully—it wouldn’t be the first time he’d smashed something by accident.</p>
<p>Natasha seems to take pity on him. “You draw, right?”</p>
<p>“Um…I used to.” He doesn’t want to go into the fact that he hasn’t been able to even hold a pen right since he came out of the ice.</p>
<p>“Not anymore?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>She finishes her drink and sets her glass down in a way that suggest she might know what it’s like to smash accidentally. “Maybe you should try again.”</p>
<p>Steve can’t help but think of Bucky—and shouldn’t that just be tattooed on his head now—<em>it’s so he can let it go</em>. <em>Gotta get it out, or it’ll stay in your lungs, drag you down choking.</em> Bucky always had a way of knowing Steve better than Steve, and Steve always had a way of doing his best to ignore any advice.</p>
<p>“Tell me something about Natasha Romanoff,” he retaliates, not expecting an answer, but needing to say something.</p>
<p>“She’s a little hesitant about sharing.” Natasha grins. “Comes with the job description. But she’s working on it.”</p>
<p>Steve nods once.</p>
<p>“She’s really stuck up about pizza,” Barton’s voice says from somewhere above Steve’s head. “And she leaves her socks all over the place—sit on the couch, Nat’s socks are already there. Open a cupboard, Nat’s socks. Take a shower—”</p>
<p>“And that’s enough of that,” Natasha says, dumping more liquid in her cup. Steve cranes his head up and watches Barton somehow climb out of the ceiling. Something plastic falls out of his ear and he swears under his breath, picking it up and jamming it back in.</p>
<p>“Yeah, your floor is a lot nicer than mine,” he decides once he straightens up, hearing aid back in, hands planted on his hips. He’s dressed in civilian clothes too—more sweats and tank tops; maybe that’s what spies wear on their days off? “I think I’ll just make camp down here.”</p>
<p>Natasha rolls her eyes. “How did I not see that coming.”</p>
<p>Steve watches the two of them interestedly. They fit like two well oiled cogs working together. It makes him cold with longing—the two people he fit with like that are gone.</p>
<p>Barton’s fingers move hurriedly and Natasha frowns, thoughtful. Steve looks down; not that he understands, but it seems like the right thing to do somehow.</p>
<p>“Wanna stay for lunch?” Barton offers.</p>
<p>“Sure,” Steve hears himself saying. “Gotta find out about pizza snobs, don’t I?”</p>
<p>Natasha sighs. “Just because I’m not a pineapple freak…”</p>
<p>“It’s <em>pizza</em>,” Barton retorts sticking his chin out. “It doesn’t matter <em>what</em> you put on it!”</p>
<p>“Anchovies?” She says, eyebrow raised.</p>
<p>“Sure!”</p>
<p>“Grape leave wraps?” Steve challenges.</p>
<p>“Hummus?”</p>
<p>“Chocolate?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span class="u">2014</span>
</p>
<p>It’s 2014 and Steve is running on borrowed time. It’s 2014, and then it’s 1933, and 1941, and he is so tired.</p>
<p>Bucky is alive. Bucky is alive somehow and against all odds, and Steve did nothing to save him.</p>
<p>“<em>It’s not your fault, Steve,</em>” Natasha says, but she’s wrong. She’s wrong.</p>
<p>And Sam says “<em>He might not be the kind you save,</em>” and he’s wrong too. It’s <em>Bucky.</em> Bucky is the kind you save.</p>
<p>After, he wakes up in the hospital once, just long enough to reassure himself that Sam is there, and then he falls back under. It’s tempting, so tempting just to stay there, where it’s warm and dark and safe. But. Bucky’s alive. Steve has to find him.</p>
<p>And so, they go looking. In the wreckage that was SHIELD and Project Insight they buy a pickup truck and leave. Steve doesn’t use a map—he doesn’t care where he goes; he goes wherever there is news, a lead, a tip off; wherever Bucky might be. It’s a ghost trail, just like Natasha said all those days ago—days?—but even ghosts couldn’t keep him away.</p>
<p>Sam and Natasha trade looks that Steve ignores; not that he isn’t terribly grateful that they just drop everything and go hunting all over the country for him, it’s just that he can’t—he can’t take it right now, can’t take the fact that he might fail.</p>
<p>Steve Rogers doesn’t fail without going down fighting though, and he doesn’t now. They storm through Hydra bases, looking for any kinds of intel. They find nothing, but it feels good to let the shield fly. Like maybe he can’t draw anymore, but he can paint a picture of revenge across concrete and metal doors; can leave behind a masterpiece of ashes and rubble.</p>
<p>In the end, they go back to New York. There are no new leads, and Natasha’s phone calls with Barton and Fury are getting longer, and the shadows under Sam’s eyes are getting darker, and Steve can’t keep doing this to them.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” Sam says, as they cross the street to the tower. “But maybe you’ve just got to let him figure it out. If he wants, he’ll come to you.”</p>
<p><em>And if he doesn’t want?</em> But Steve doesn’t say it. If there’s one thing he can do now, it’s give Bucky a choice. He goes to sleep—on the firmer mattress Tony got him—and spends the first day back in the gym.</p>
<p>After a loud and indistinct dinner with the members of the team that are currently in New York, Steve goes for a walk. His head whirs, and his feet struggle to keep up. Streetlights illuminate a stepping stone path down every street; in the darkness he is just another New Yorker out for a walk, following them.</p>
<p>He looks up and finds himself in Brooklyn. The streets look different, and the buildings look different, but the sounds, and the smells are the same; they sink into his shoulders and settle there, a weight lifted, a weight gained.</p>
<p>His feet carry him down streets that aren’t quite so familiar anymore, but still hold a place on the map inside him. He stops, finally, in front of a small laundromat, the <em>closed</em> sign winking at him.</p>
<p>Nothing about the building shows what it was, and that’s somewhat startling. He’d thought…he’d thought he’d still <em>know</em>. But if not for the address, there is no way to link the laundromat and the small cramped apartment two boys shared decades ago.</p>
<p>It doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would though. After all, he is not the same as the boy he was, so his house shouldn’t be either. It’s not this particular apartment he misses. Not really.</p>
<p>He’s not sure what changes, only he knows he isn’t alone anymore. It’s not the pedestrians further down the sidewalk, it’s not the dog barking a block away. It’s the soft scuff of footsteps Steve’s ear has always been attuned to; the lilt in someone’s walk, the sound of someone who’s been on your six forever.</p>
<p>He doesn’t turn around, and a little voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Sam whispers how careless that is, but he doesn’t care. “Hey,” he says under his breath.</p>
<p>“Hey.” Bucky’s footsteps come alongside Steve and fall still. “Thought you might come here.”</p>
<p>And Steve didn’t even mean to, isn’t that funny? Not consciously, anyway. He finds he isn’t really surprised. “Well, here I am. How you been, Buck?” He still can’t look up, convinced all he’ll see is smoke—a mirage vanished.</p>
<p>“Oh, you know,” Bucky says, like they’re shooting the breeze on the fire escape again, like they’re seventeen and seventy five all at once and nothing really has changed.</p>
<p>Steve can’t help it—he glances up. And once he does that, he can’t stop himself. His eyes track Bucky’s dark coat, up to his hair, shoulder length and dirty. The streetlight can’t quite find him, he is all shadows. A cap covers his eyes, and Steve reaches out to take it off before he remembers to stop himself; his hand pauses awkwardly in between them.</p>
<p>Bucky’s head follows the movement, freezing along with Steve. There’s a beat, and then Steve lowers his hand. “Sorry.”</p>
<p>Bucky shakes his head confusedly. “No…it’s just…I was waiting for the—the fear. When people move suddenly—” his frown melts into something else; not quite a smile, but not too far away from it either. “But it didn’t come. Guess I always did know your hands pretty well.”</p>
<p>Steve involuntarily holds them up, perplexed. “My hands?”</p>
<p>Bucky reaches out hesitantly. His fingers are warm and calloused, and cool and smooth, and oh so comforting. He rubs his thumbs across Steve’s knuckles. “Artist’s hands.”</p>
<p><em>Not anymore</em>, Steve wants to say, but he bites his tongue. Bucky looks up anyway, eyes still hidden under the shadows of his cap.</p>
<p>“Steve?”</p>
<p>Steve tightens his jaw. “They’re not…not anymore.”</p>
<p>Bucky tugs, and Steve falls forward into his arms. His chin fits over the curl of Bucky’s shoulder, and his arms wrap around Bucky’s neck. Bucky’s grip is just as tight, if not tighter, squeezing Steve in a way nobody’s done in forever.</p>
<p>Maybe there’s no one strong enough to do it these days. No one but Bucky.</p>
<p>Steve buries his face in Bucky’s hair and breathes him in. He smells faintly of some kind of spice, and less faintly in need of a shower, but Steve has never cared less in his life. Thoughts fly past him, splatting like bugs on a windshield. What if Bucky leaves again? How on earth can Steve ask him to stay, but how on earth is he going to watch him walk away? If his hands aren’t artist’s hands, then what are they now? What if—</p>
<p>“Your hands are the same hands,” Bucky whispers, clutching the back of Steve’s sweatshirt. “Just because they can’t draw right now doesn’t mean they won’t ever again.”</p>
<p>Steve pulls back just enough to look at him.</p>
<p>“My hands are covered in blood,” Bucky says matter of factly. Steve feels as though he’s been slapped in the face. “Doesn’t mean they can’t write anymore, or cook dinner.”</p>
<p>Steve slowly reaches up, slow enough Bucky could knock him away. Bucky’s hands stay around his waist, only his eyes moving, watchful. Steve lifts the cap off his head, and finally looks, unhindered.</p>
<p>Bucky is beautiful, he’s always been so beautiful; and so strong—Steve has no idea how he does it. Here’s Steve been awake for three years now, and just barely managing, and Bucky, who’s been through way worse for <em>seventy years</em> just as smart as ever and helping <em>Steve</em>. Steve has missed him <em>so</em> much.</p>
<p>“Are you going to stick around?” He tries to keep the desperate hope from his voice, and fails miserably.</p>
<p>Bucky’s lips curve into a slow smile. “Is this because your cooking is shit?”</p>
<p>“What—no—”</p>
<p>Bucky smirks. He gently releases Steve and steps back. “Why do you think I’ve been waiting here for you?”</p>
<p>“Come home,” Steve says, before he can lose his nerve. “Please come home, Bucky?”</p>
<p>Bucky tilts his head to one side, and steps forward again, right into Steve’s space. His flesh fingertips brush Steve’s cheek. “I did.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span class="u">2015</span>
</p>
<p>“Steve!” Natasha calls.</p>
<p>He sets down the cutting board of chopped mushrooms he was holding for Sam and walks into the living room. Natasha, having been deemed trusted even <em>less</em> in the kitchen than Steve, is sprawled on Sam’s couch while Steve helps make dinner under Sam’s eagle eye, and Bucky and Clint are out getting dessert.</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“You know how you said you didn’t draw anymore?”</p>
<p>He sits down beside her. “Yeah.”</p>
<p>“You ever think about starting again?”</p>
<p>Steve looks at her. The thing is, he has. Having Bucky back now, living in a new apartment in Brooklyn, together again—it makes his fingers itch, something he never thought he’d feel again. And Bucky, who has always filled so many pages of Steve’s sketchbook, who never fit into his categories, but practically begged to be drawn anyway…he’s thought about it. He’s thought about it a lot.</p>
<p>“You have,” Natasha says knowingly. You don’t become a spy for nothing, Steve figures.</p>
<p>He quirks his lips at her. “Maybe.”</p>
<p>“You should start again,” she prompts. “I’d be good for you. And on that note…have you told Barnes yet?”</p>
<p>“Told him what?”</p>
<p>She leans toward him. “Please don’t insult my intelligence, Steven.”</p>
<p>It takes him a minute, but when it finally hits home, he frowns. “Nat.”</p>
<p>“What? Why haven’t you told him?”</p>
<p>Why? Steve flashes back to all his confused feelings, to all his locking up and storing of them until a better time. Well…there had never been a better time, had there. Not with Peggy, and not now. He thinks of Dorothy and the napkin drawing, and Lucille and the backstage kiss.</p>
<p>“Because it’s not like that,” he settles on.</p>
<p>She tilts her head. “Because he’s not like that?”</p>
<p>Steve shrugs. “Yeah.”</p>
<p>“You’re sure?”</p>
<p>“Natasha, c’mon,” Steve says, exasperated. “Have you met him? It’s not like that.”</p>
<p>“You should still tell him.”</p>
<p>He shakes his head at her, growing angry. It’s none of her business.</p>
<p>“Why not? Because you’re scared? That’s a shitty reason, Steve.”</p>
<p>“What—okay fine!” he fires back. “You win, Nat, you caught me. Yes, I’m scared, I’m terrified. And that’s reason enough.”</p>
<p>She puts a hand on his knee. “What is there to be so scared about? He’s your friend.”</p>
<p>What is there to be so scared about? Steve nearly starts laughing. He’s been scared for years—he’s been scared since Bucky first tipped his head back and let the sunlight dance across his nose; he’s been scared half his life. Because it’s Bucky, and where Bucky is concerned nothing is simple.</p>
<p>Bucky always helping him out of trouble, Bucky being his only family after his Ma died. Bucky not fitting into Steve’s categories, but fitting everywhere else; into each groove of Steve’s life, into his couch, and his sketchbook, into his <em>skin.</em></p>
<p>And if that wasn’t confusing enough, then Steve was big, and suddenly there was no shortage of people interested in him, in being with him. And then there was Peggy, who maybe could’ve been something more. And all of it passed him by, like indistinct blurs outside a car window.</p>
<p>All this time he’s been dodging the truth, dodging having to deal with how he feels. He can’t stop, can’t take the time to unravel it all. He can’t.</p>
<p>Bucky being back with him now, after so long, after everyone and everything had torn them apart, well, Steve is the luckiest man in the world. He doesn’t need anything else, would never ask for it.</p>
<p>“He’s my friend,” Steve says. “It’s enough.”</p>
<p>All through dinner he’s distracted. Natasha keeps up a normal amount of chatter, but Steve’s never been very good at hiding his thoughts. Bucky glances over at him every other minute, it feels like, and the little wrinkle between his brows doesn’t disappear.</p>
<p>Steve thinks about Dorothy, and that night long ago when his mind had wandered away without him. Who could’ve thought that would come back to haunt him so thoroughly?</p>
<p>The motorbike ride home with Bucky is a silent one. Bucky waits while they climb the steps and unlock the door, throw their shoes down and take off their jackets. Then he rounds on Steve.</p>
<p>“What’s going on?”</p>
<p>Steve really, really doesn’t want to tell him what’s going on. “Tired, I guess.”</p>
<p>“Bullshit,” Bucky counters. He leaves his keys on the table and stalks into the living room to turn on a lamp. “I know you, punk, and I know that’s a lie. Spit it out.”</p>
<p>Steve ducks into the kitchen instead, and stares at the window of moonlight cast on the floor. How is he supposed to spit it out when he can barely sort through the mess swirling around his head? It’s his mess, thank you, not Bucky’s, and he’ll deal with it some other time.</p>
<p>“Hey!” Bucky appears in the doorway, a dark and lovely silhouette. “I’m talking to you, Rogers.”</p>
<p>“Well why don’t you stop?” Steve bites out.</p>
<p>Bucky doesn’t turn on the light, just stands there watching. “What’s going on?” he repeats.</p>
<p>“Nothing.”</p>
<p>“God damn, Steve, do I gotta come over there and shake it outta you?” Bucky’s brow twists up and his eyes flash. Steve’s stomach does a flip—from what emotion he has no idea.</p>
<p>“I’d like to see you try,” he says darkly. “I’m bigger than you now, remember?”</p>
<p>Bucky tilts his head to one side. Steve’s stomach does another flip, and this time it’s definitely an <em>oh shit</em> flip. Bucky walks forward slowly, taking his time, well and truly furious. “Guess what asshole? You might not be the scrawny little kid you were, but the only real thing that got bigger is your head!”</p>
<p>Steve blinks.</p>
<p>“You stubborn, aggravating sonofabitch, I’d like to land you one right on the nose!”</p>
<p>“Then do it.” Steve closes the last bit of distance between then and sticks out his jaw. “Go on then, if you want to so bad.”</p>
<p>Bucky freezes.</p>
<p>Steve realizes they’re standing nose to nose in the middle of the dark kitchen. Bucky’s eyes catch the moonlight, more gray than blue. Steve is suddenly terrified. <em>Tell him.</em></p>
<p>“What, and break that poor thing again?” Bucky says softly. “Nah. <em>I’m</em> not the one always chasing a fight.”</p>
<p>Steve opens his mouth and stops. What is he even trying to say? They’re so far past any kind of declarations he might give; so far past <em>I love you.</em></p>
<p>Bucky sees him struggling and waits patiently. And maybe, maybe they’re so far past any declarations, but that doesn’t mean Steve can’t try.</p>
<p>“Bucky—” he drops his head, terror threatening to climb up his throat. When he makes himself look up again, Bucky is still waiting. <em>I love you I love you I love you I love— </em>“Bucky, I—”</p>
<p>He can’t do it. After so long, he still can’t do it.</p>
<p>Sometimes he wonders what his life all amounts to. Questions of war, and battles; monuments and flags; fighting and peace dance around him. But sometimes it doesn’t work that way, not even for him. Maybe, despite the war, the flags, and the fighting, maybe his life was all for this—standing in a dark kitchen late at night, inches from kissing his best friend in the whole universe.</p>
<p>Kissing him doesn’t sound so bad, either. But that’s an easy out and Steve won’t let himself do it. He’s got to say it. He’s got to finally say it.</p>
<p>“Bucky, I love you,” he says, and it’s over so quick, so fast for something almost a century in the making. It’s gone. So, he says it again. “I love you. I love you so bad—”</p>
<p>Bucky’s warm finger comes up and presses against Steve’s lips. “Shush.”</p>
<p>He knows. He knows the fierce, untamable words in Steve’s head that get caught and twisted on the way out; he knows the whole scarred mess that is Steve’s heart. Steve sags in the relief that he doesn’t need to say any more, before he remembers there’s nothing to be relieved about. He said it; he did it. That’s only the half of it.</p>
<p>“—I’m sorry,” he stammers. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t mean anything had to change, I would never—Bucky—”</p>
<p>“Do yourself a favor and shut up, will ya?” Bucky murmurs. “I ain’t mad anymore, punk.”</p>
<p>But he—did he—what does he mean?</p>
<p>“Is that why you were always drawin’ me so much?”</p>
<p><em>What?</em> Steve laughs, and he’s not sure if it’s because of all the fear still rolling around his stomach, or because of the absurdity of it all. Is that why—he doesn’t know. Loving Bucky is something he’s done for so long; he can’t tell where it started or ended. He would draw Bucky in every timeline, in every scenario. He would love him just the same.</p>
<p>“Yeah, it is, isn’t it,” and Bucky grins, the hand that pressed Steve’s mouth shut now cupping his jaw. “You absolute asshole.”</p>
<p>“What?” Steve’s laughing gets cut off abruptly. “How is that—why would that—”</p>
<p>“Stop tryin’ to pick a fight with me, I told you I’m not mad anymore!”</p>
<p>“Well for someone who isn’t mad you’re sure doin’ a lot of yelling—”</p>
<p>Bucky leans up and kisses him. This is twice as effective at shutting him up, and Steve thinks wildly that he may never talk again, not if it meant Bucky has to stop kissing him. His hands move of their own accord, yanking Bucky in by the belt loops, and Bucky smiles against his lips.</p>
<p>Steve still remembers the first real gulp of oxygen he had when he half fell out of the vita-ray. The dizziness of it, the bliss. This kiss reminds him of that, but a thousand times better. You don’t realize you’re missing out on oxygen until you taste it for real, and you can’t know how long you’ve been going only half alive until you’re not anymore. It is everything he never dared dream about, it is more than he ever could’ve hoped for.</p>
<p>After a moment, or maybe another whole century, they break apart. Bucky’s eyes are twinkling in the moonlight, and his smile has only grown. He is beautiful; he is so beautiful Steve’s heart <em>hurts</em>.</p>
<p>“It was nice, bein’ drawn all the time.”</p>
<p>Steve ducks his chin awkwardly. “Does that mean you love me back?”</p>
<p>“Does that mean—” Bucky punches his arm, hard. “You idiot! You fucking oblivious idiot, you completely awful, stubborn moron—”</p>
<p>Steve kisses him again and marvels at it. His hands slot in on either side of Bucky’s face, slide into his thick, short curls like they were made to fit there; like another of Bucky’s puzzle pieces coming home next to Steve’s. If he never stepped away from Bucky that would be just fine with him.</p>
<p>“Hey—” Bucky breathes. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.”</p>
<p>He looks back at Bucky, and he realizes. Bucky didn’t sit right in any of the categories, couldn’t be crammed into all of them, let alone one. He fits into all of them and more, so maybe Steve just needs more categories.</p>
<p>Bucky is Things Every Artist Should Know How To Draw. Bucky is Things That Are Interesting. Bucky is Things That Are Beautiful. He is Things That Steve Loves. He is Things Impossible To Truly Capture But Impossible To Stop Trying.</p>
<p>He is everything and anything, and he is Steve’s heart in another body.</p>
<p>“I love you,” Steve says again. The words pour out, the dam finally broken after decades.</p>
<p>Bucky laughs into his mouth. “I know, you big sap. I love you more.”</p>
<p>This is factually impossible, so Steve leans in again, determined to prove him wrong. This is a battle he would gladly fight every day for the rest of his life. <em>This</em>, he thinks, is <em>exactly</em> what his whole life was for.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span class="u">2015 Part 2</span>
</p>
<p>It is 2015, and Steve is hungry. The kitchen is filled with noise and good smells, and he’s been told three times by three different people now, that dinner will be ready when it’s ready, and no amount of whining is going to speed it up.</p>
<p>Natasha is opening a bottle of wine, concentrating with her hair falling into her face. Clint is behind her, tossing lettuce into a bowl with the attitude of someone who doesn’t think lettuce should be <em>tossed,</em> merely <em>dumped.</em> Sam is at the stove, decked out in a falcon apron, two pans going simultaneously. Bucky is watching the oven, which roughly translates to <em>getting in the way and talking loudly.</em></p>
<p>Steve thinks of the awful apartment in Manhattan from his just-out-of-the-ice days, and the emptiness that hung off the walls and seeped down from the ceiling. He never would’ve guessed that soon his home would be full of noise and light, and friends and good smells.</p>
<p>Bucky actually opens the oven and checks inside, and a terribly delicious smell drifts into the room.</p>
<p>Steve drums his fingers on the table. “How long—”</p>
<p>“Not YET,” Natasha and Sam say together.</p>
<p>Bucky grins, and wipes his hands on Sam’s apron. Ignoring the yelp of protest, he walks past Steve over to the bookshelf and pulls something down.</p>
<p>He comes back and slides it over to Steve. It’s a brand-new sketchbook.</p>
<p>Steve frowns. “Bucky—"</p>
<p>“Your hands made sandwiches for lunch,” Bucky says patiently. “Your hands picked out seeds for a garden this morning. Your hands throw that frisbee of yours, they wash strawberries, they read books, they drive the motorcycle…”</p>
<p>He doesn’t finish, but Steve hears it anyway. Bucky knows, Bucky always knows when Steve’s fingers itch. It’s been so long. Maybe Bucky is right, even if Steve would never say it out loud.</p>
<p>He takes the pencil offered to him.</p>
<p>First, he sketches his Ma. Her soft smile appears on the paper, her arm arms wrapped around something left blank. Steve can count on one hand how often he draws himself; he doesn’t need to.</p>
<p>Bucky is next, eyes laughing, light dripping across his face, the sharp lines of his jaw dark and angular. For the first time in his life, Steve sees how much is in his drawings of Bucky, how obvious it really is. He notices now, he notices everything. He smiles to himself.</p>
<p>His third picture is done when they finally carry dish after dish to the table. Natasha sets the salad down and peers over his shoulder.</p>
<p>“It’s beautiful, Steve.”</p>
<p>Her words bring Sam and Clint over too, and Steve holds it up for them, oddly unbashful. Bucky doesn’t follow, but stays on the other side of the table, pouring water into glasses. The light from the windows glints on the pitcher and his left arm, exposed up to the elbow. After the other have looked, Steve slides the book over.</p>
<p>Bucky only looks for a minute before nodding. “Artist’s hands.”</p>
<p>Steve grins wetly. The third drawing is all of them, together, around a table just like this one, laughing. As quickly as it was drawn, he did his best to let his gratefulness and affection shine through in the shading of Natasha’s hair; in Clint’s fingers, held out in front of him and signing rapidly; in the lines around Sam’s eyes. And in Bucky, the smile stretching across his face now a perfect match to his paper and lead twin.</p>
<p>They are his friends. They are Things Every Artist Should Know How To Draw. They are Things That Are Interesting. They are Things That Are Beautiful. They are Things That Steve Loves. They are more than a few categories in the head of a young boy trying to make sense of things—they don’t need to fit into anything.</p>
<p>He finds himself smiling so widely his mouth hurts. Bucky walks around the table, leans over, and presses a kiss to his hair. “Guess what, Steve.”</p>
<p>Steve raises his eyebrows.</p>
<p>“It’s dinnertime,” Sam says dryly.</p>
<p>Everyone laughs, and Steve thinks there’s no way he was able to capture it right in his book; he couldn’t possibly have gotten down all the happiness. Oh well. Guess he’ll just have to try again and again and again.</p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A big thank you to everyone who cheered me on and helped me get the ideas in my head on to the page--from just asking me about my projects, to pumping me up, to listening while I worked out storyline issues, to helping me figure out how the heck this AO3 thing works--I so appreciate you guys!!!</p>
<p>And hey, thank you so much for reading! If you feel like it, leave me a comment? And I'm on  <a href="https://somanywords.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a> if you'd like to come cry over Steve Rogers, which I do daily...</p></blockquote></div></div>
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